


How They Move On

by gudhvinr



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dreams and Nightmares, Family, Friendship/Love, Legilimency, M/M, Non-Chronological, Reincarnation, Repressed Memories, Spiritual, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 10:29:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2578310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gudhvinr/pseuds/gudhvinr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Al dreams of green light and wakes weeping with grief again, like he did when he was a little child, yet he cannot remember the cause whence the grief has sprung. So someone will have to find out for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How They Move On

“ _Legilimens_!”

Whether the river is summer-warm or has winter's frigid bite, the stones don't move. Al kept his eyes shut, his head tall. He could hear Scorpius take a deep, shaky breath. But the signal for respite didn't come. Instead...

“ _LEGILIMENS_!” like the crack of a whip. Like lightning against a mountain. Al thought he could taste its fire, feel it blaze through his flesh. He heard feet stumbling. His eyes open, stinging. Scorpius fell to the ground and vomited.

Al collapsed on his back, too exhausted to hear their tutor's words as she spoke with soft urgency to the Slytherin boy. His eyes still stung, but he fell asleep anyway.

 

* * *

 

“Drink your tea, Potter,” Madame Longbottom repeated impatiently.

He sighed gustily, but she simply stared him down. “Shall I get you an iron lung?” she added. “We may have a handful of them still in storage.”

Al took a grudging sip, and did not cringe. “What _is_ this?” he murmured. “It tastes like some kind of punishment.”

“I shall leave _that_ ,” Madame Longbottom said firmly, “to your instructor.”

Al did cringe that time.

 

* * *

 

The nightmares had started again on his fifteenth birthday. That chill March night, he'd only realised what was happening when the lights came on. “Al? Wh... What's the matter?”

He'd been crying so hard that he felt as if he would choke.

Later that morning, his brother and cousin came into the Hufflepuff common room. Rose fairly charged in, while James crept in after her, face lowered. They both hugged him tightly, and James started shaking and said that he was so sorry for calling his brother a—

But that wasn't why Al had been crying. When James heard that it had started again, he went very still, kissed his little brother on the forehead, and said nothing. Rose made them hot chocolate and sang to Al the way that his Mum had, years ago.

 

* * *

 

“Unlike you, Harry, your son is nothing short of an Occlumency prodigy,” Madame McGonagall said over tea and biscuits. “I confess that he did not at all seem to have the temperament. Normally, young people with such sensitivity of their emotions have no talent for it.” She smiled faintly. “His namesakes might have succeeded where I have not, but I do not possess their genius for these arts.”

Al's fingers twitched. These meetings made him want to disappear into a forest and not resurface for a weekend. He turned and stared at a finch hopping along the windowsill.

Dad took a long sip of tea and scratched his neck. He only did that when he was anxious, even though his vivid eyes betrayed no emotion, as per an Auror's training. “You won't continue, then?” he asked, so gently.

Madame McGonagall scoffed. “Of course I will. But my methods will have to change. If I were to use my full strength, it would... distress anyone on the receiving end of such. I shall need to have someone else perform the Legilimency.”

“Wait, what?” Al had started in his chair. “I thought you're the only Legilimens who's good enough!”

The witch regarded him silently for a moment, then said, “I am sorry to have to say this, Albus Severus, but you do not trust me enough to take down your guard. It would take more than a family friendship to get past the barriers within your memories.”

Al's mouth hung open like a git's, then shut. He turned away again, this time with his face burning hot.

“Who might you have in mind, Minerva?” Dad asked, looking at his son. “Me? My wife?”

“No, neither of you have a Legilimens' temperament in you, particularly not in regard to your own children. It must be another.”

“ _Who_? Who can do what you and us can't?”

The witch made no reply.

 

* * *

 

Al sat and tried to breathe evenly. He also tried not to imagine himself in green and silver; the thought nearly made him sick. The Sorting Hat descended upon him.

“ _HUFFLEPUFF_!”

What.

 

* * *

 

Scorpius Malfoy slowly put his head down on his desk. “I am going to fail this class,” he mumbled into the wood matter-of-factly.

“We're first years and you're brilliant,” Al said after he finished scratching out a line. The candles' flames danced in the chill draught.

“And...?” Scorpius asked the desk.

“And that means you're not failing anything, Scorpius. You should just go to sleep. We could try this again tomorrow.” Al stifled a snigger. “Why would you take Intermediate Music if you don't like learning music theory, eh?”

Scorpius sat up and gave his class partner a grotesque imitation of “the posh face,” as he called it. “I shall have you know, Potter, that my mother hired the finest pureblood piano tutor in some miserable, icy country for my education as a scion of the Malfoy line. It was expected that I'd keep practicing so that I could play some bloody recital for her when I come home for Christmas.”

There was something strange in his tone. “Don't you like your mum, Scorpius?” Al asked tentatively. He pretended to be fascinated with a chord.

The Slytherin shrugged. “She's my mum. I love her like any bloke loves his mum.”

“But do you like her? As a person?”

Scorpius turned and raised an eyebrow. “What's it to you, Potter?” His eyes tensed slightly.

Al moved in his chair uncomfortably. “Um. I think that we could make this one a quarter-note and—”

“Come off it. People trying to change the subject, I hate that.” Scorpius' eyes were fixed on Al's. “Tell me, what's my mum to you, Potter?”

Al took a deep breath. “I. Er. My dad said him and your dad fought a lot. That your dad used to be nasty to everyone. And I wanted to know—”

“If my parents are still like that,” Scorpius finished. His pale eyes glittered. “They are not, Potter,” he said in a tone as soft as it was cold. “Though that must surprise you.”

“No!” Al flinched at himself, he had said it so loudly. “It doesn't. Because you're not nasty. You're not. You're a bit scary sometimes, yeah, but you're a good bloke. You play piano beautifully.” His hands shook. “I like working with you and you're brilliant like I said.”

Scorpius blinked.

“Mate,” Al added. He tried to make a smile.

Scorpius hugged him.

 

* * *

 

Green light. One day, they told him what it meant, told him about the Unforgivable Curses, but he already knew it in his heart. Night after night, he felt his world end in that flash, and his heart stopped cold. That was what the nightmares were about.

That's what he told everyone: his parents, the healers, his siblings when they got older. Yet it wasn't true. Yeah, he saw that every night when the dreams came, but it was not the light that made him weep until his lips dripped with snot. It was not the light that haunted his waking thoughts. It was all the faces that Al knew that he had once known, though their names he could no longer remember.

_Mother, forgive me._

 

* * *

 

“You bloody idiot,” Al whispered.

Pale eyelashes fluttered, and the scion of the Malfoy line grinned. “I don't regret a thing. Amicus certus in re incerta.”

“The fuck does that mean?”

Scorpius shook his head as much as he could. “Slytherin's secrets!” he hissed. He opened his eyes wider. “I feel fine! Let's have another go, yeah?”

Al crossed his arms and smiled at him incredulously. “Scorpius, it's been an hour and a half. We can try again next Saturday.”

“Oi! Madame McGonagall said that I'm the only one that can do this, Potter!”

“She did, and you've also only known Legilimency for two months. I'm not going to have you kill yourself for this.”

The Slytherin said nothing, but closed his eyes once more, and nodded in assent. Al stayed.

 

* * *

 

_Please look at me._

All the thronging hundreds and all the friends in black were blind and deaf. He was still theirs, wasn't he? Didn't they love him? Why did nobody look?

Father wept. Mother could not. _I am so sorry_.

The mourners were gone. No sun now. Where could he go? He didn't want to be left alone. But he didn't know what to do. He loved them all tremendously. He couldn't leave them. Not now.

_Please don't forget about me._

 

* * *

 

“Fucking poofter,” James snarled.

 

* * *

 

“I don't know what's wrong with me, mummy,” Al whispered into her ear as she held him, as she wiped the stains from his cheeks.

She pulled back just enough to look him right in the eyes. “Nothing at all in the world, Albus.”

Mum made him hot chocolate and sang him a song, and Dad told him about the dementors.

Al cried again that night when he saw Dad's Patronus, but this time, they were happy tears.

 

* * *

 

“I like it down here!” Rose exclaimed as she looked around the Hufflepuff common room. She hurled herself onto a sofa by the fireplace and sprawled out. “Warm like Gryffindor Tower, but much cosier.”

Al shrugged. “It's fine.”

Rose looked at him over her shoulder with a bemused expression. “Al, you hardly sound pleased with your charming new abode.”

He sat down and leaned back next to his cousin. Rose kept glancing over at him, but he focused his gaze into the fire.

After a couple minutes' silence, she inched closer to him. “Albus, if you're worried about James teasing you, I can just hex him.” She gave him an ephemeral smile, but her eyes were too wide.

Al shook his head. And then, in a murmur: “I knew this room.”

Rose cocked her head, but said nothing.

He pressed on. “I. I was here. Once. I knew, I know this room. When I came in for the first time, I, I remembered it. This place I've never been.”

She said nothing, but put her arm around his shoulders, and they sat in silence, waiting for the fire to die.

 

* * *

 

James wasn't good at apologising, but he got an O for effort. Al thought he'd be able to fry an egg on his brother's forehead, his face was flushed so red.

After James' attempt trailed off into an ashamed silence, Scorpius amazed Al by smiling graciously, and saying, “I believe you.” The Slytherin patted the Gryffindor's shoulder and continued on his way to breakfast. Al flashed a grateful grin at his brother and then hurried after his friend. “Always remember, Potter,” Scorpius said breezily, “that in victory, one must be magnanimous.”

“I didn't know that the Malfoys taught noblesse oblige.”

Scorpius snorted. “They don't. I had to learn it for myself.” He glanced over at Al. “How have you been faring, Potter? Your arse of a brother isn't the reason you passed out in Potions yesterday.”

Al swallowed against the sudden tightness in his throat. “I'll tell you tonight.”

 

* * *

 

Dad's face was bereft of all understanding, yet still, in his eyes, tears were pooling.

 

* * *

 

“ _Regrets are seed for madness, dear boy_.”

The days took flight and passed by like wild geese in autumn. Names he could remember scattered and faded.

_Let me end the debt. Let us stand as equals once again._

 

* * *

 

“Are you certain you want to do this again, Mister Malfoy?” Madame McGonagall was there already, as always. She'd brought Turkish delight. She held Scorpius' hand in her own. “After that last incident... Mister Potter's barriers may simply be too strong for you, young as you are.”

Scorpius gave her hand a squeeze, looking to Al and setting his jaw.

Al sat down and shut his eyes to prepare for the repeat of the exercise.

“Trust in him, Mister Potter,” McGonagall said quietly as she took her seat. “Resist nothing that he does. Remain neutral within yourself.”

Al sat down and imagined that he was a mountain.

“ _LEGILIMENS_!”

 

* * *

 

“ _Make a refuge within yourself where the heartache can lie in fitful sleep, for there it may be kept safe from the troubles of what is to come. Let it rest there for now, lest the grief break the dams of your soul. One day, my boy, these memories will reawaken, but now is not that time. I know what it is to lose one's heart to memory and its shades, until love twists in upon you like a rope become a noose, come to murder your hope and turn your dreams to ash. Do not linger here, bound by your grief—though grieve you shall for long and long—but let your heart rest in a newborn dream, and take your hope in days to come_.”

 

* * *

 

Drowned sunlight filled the room with dappled turquoise. The dark green sheets looked black as pitch, but Scorpius' hair and skin seemed a merman's. He put his hands behind his head and regarded Al with an expression grave enough that one might mistake him for a Grecian statue. It was rather incongruous for a boy lying in bed without a shirt on.

“Honestly, Potter, why pick _me_ for this? Don't you trust your Hufflepuff friends more?” The Slytherin raised his eyebrows slightly as he continued, “We Slytherins may have a talent for it, but _you_ letting me do _that_ to you... That's no mere act of friendship that you're asking me to do.”

“There's no such thing as a _mere_ act of friendship, you bloody git.”

Scorpius was silent for a moment, then put a hand over his eyes and groaned. “A Hufflepuff to the bone.” Then he bolted up, leapt off his bed, and strode right up to Al, their faces but a hand's breadth apart. “I am honoured by your trust, and so will be glad to do just as you have asked me.” He held out his hand. Bloody Malfoy formality.

“Just remember—”

“Not a word to your prat brother. Yes. Good Lord, I thought that we had already made that quite clear.”

Al sighed. He was already feeling weary of what was yet to come. “I'm not ready for him to know about all this. About who I think I might really be.”

Scorpius' gravity melted away. For once, his eyes widened and grew soft rather than narrow. Putting an arm around Al's shoulders and pulling him in for a half-embrace, he murmured. “Then it's a good thing you've got a Malfoy along.” He actually winked, though his smile was gentle. “We're good,” this said in a whisper, “at keeping secrets.”

 

* * *

 

When the barriers were broken at last, Al's vision went dark and, for a moment, he forgot where he was, knew only that his body was shivering, shuddering, suddenly prickling all over as cold sweat began to soak into his clothes. He pissed himself. _Thank God I took a shit this afternoon_ , he thought absurdly as he saw... Saw.

Scorpius' jaw was clenched as tightly as his trembling fists. Inside Al. With Al. Looking down and seeing all the darkling shapes and all their nightmare masks. Assembled to one purpose, to one man—or a thing that passed for a man, its form all cloaked with reeking darkness. Its eyes like flames that cast no light. Vertiginous depth churned about it, as though the world could not bear the outrage of its presence.

Another form, but twenty paces before the other. This one, his form shone like moonlight. Al saw this one drawn towards him—or was it the other way around?—as two beams of light shot forth between the shadow and the moon, forking out and caging them.

The moment changed. Green light bathed Al, washed all feeling from his body. He watched himself collapse and not rise up again. Scorpius' eyes bulged as if seeing the end of everything. Yes, that was _his_ body lying there, though the face was not the same.

_Mother, forgive me._

The shadow and the moon, and Al was with the light, and looked upon Dad's face, though lifted of the weight of decades. He reached out but could not touch. All about them were the branching beams of light, illumining Dad's face, and the other's. Scorpius moaned in animal terror as the Dark Lord's lips drew back into a hundred lines of hatred.

Harry Potter looked at Al, and breathed a name.

 

* * *

 

“I love you so much it's scary,” James wept as he pulled Al and Scorpius into his arms, his heart hammering with shame in his breast.

 

* * *

 

The Headmaster embraced him in farewell, and Al fell asleep in his mother's womb.

 

* * *

 

If there was some lesson to be drawn from this, Al wished that he could have learned it without having to hear Scorpius screaming as he pressed his face into Al's chest, their hands each clutching the other's so hard that it felt as if the bones might crack. Al tucked Scorpius' head under his chin and tried to hum a song as the heat of Scorpius' tears spread into his shirt.

“Remember that I'm living still,”Al heard himself saying. “You haven't lost me.”

Scorpius made a choking sound that Al realised was an attempt at speech. He swallowed, and tried again. “Not that.” A gasping breath. “My grandfather. The _shame_. That he, he served that _abomination_ —”

“And you do not, never, will never share in that, for it was not your doing...” Al closed his eyes, and rocked Scorpius in his arms. For once, he thought that the Slytherin might be glad that he was the shorter of the two of them. “Shut up, Scorpius.”

Scorpius tried to pull back and pour more words out of his Slytherin face, so Al shut him up.

 

* * *

 

“It. No. It can't.” Dad reached out, put his hands over Al's heart. “I cannot believe this.”

“You do,”Al answered.

“Cedric,” Dad breathed in wonder, in grief.

 _And now our debt is done._ “Al now, remember. Just Al.”

 

* * *

 

“No nightmares last night?” Scorpius was grinning with sheer joy. “Nothing?”

“Not nothing,” Al said, as he pulled his Slytherin in for a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked the style I used here, you can find it employed with far greater mastery in Terence Malick's film, "[The Tree of Life](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXRYA1dxP_0)," or in R. Scott Bakker's disturbing short story, "[The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin](https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/stories/the-four-revelations-of-cinialjin/)."


End file.
